An Independent Voice That Advocates For The Classroom Educator Without The Corrupting Politics Tied To Our Union And DOE Leadership.

Wednesday, August 09, 2017

If Chalkbeat Spoke To An ATR, Their Articles Don't Reflect It.

Over the last two weeks there has been a media frenzy about the City considering hiring ATRs to fill vacancies after October 15th. The articles range from calling ATRs "unwanted" to "bad" teachers. Not one article brings out the real culprit for the ATR pool. the DOE policy called "Fair Student Funding" that discriminates hiring of veteran teachers.

The media has gone out of their way to quote many education deformer groups and a parent who supports them but somehow can't seen to interview an ATR to get their side of the story. This includes the education deformer and pro charter school online newspaper Chalkbeat. According to Chalkbeat they claim that they cannot get answers to questions that would put statistics to the questions they want answered like:

How many ATRs were subject to discipline?

How many years of experience do the average ATR has?

What schools did ATRs last have a long-term or provisional appointment?

How many years has the ATR been in the pool?

What areas are the ATRs certified in?

Looking at the Chalkbeat questions it certainly appears that the online paper is trying to show that ATRs are terrible teachers, either due to being disciplined or have other negative factors like lack of useless and mind-numbing professional development and being highly experienced. Moreover, they also want to prove that high poverty, minority schools get the ATRs.

Maybe, Chalkbeat should have asked these questions about the ATR pool instead.

What is the average age and salary of the ATR pool?

What is the average years of experience of teachers who transferred by the Open Market Transfer System? What are the percentages?

What is the the actual number in the ATR pool as of the start of the school year?

Why does the DOE keep two lists of ATRs?

When will the DOE eliminate the "fair student funding" that incentivizes principals to hire "the cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school?

In all fairness Chalkbeat did try to contact me and I ignored them since my experience with sleazy education reporters like the Daily News Ben Chapman has shown me that they don;t care about the truth. Their aim is to further demonize ATRs. Case in point. According to NYC Educator an ATR did speak to the same Chalkbeat reporter that tried to contact me and nothing he or she said seemed to be included in their latest ATR bashing article. With the possible exception of Susan Edelman, I will have nothing to do with a news reporter. Since they represent yellow journalism at its worst.

update:
ATR Life in Limbo spoke to Chalkbeat on Tuesday for an hour and set the
reporter straight. Let's see if Chalkbeat writes an article and
without the anti-ATR spin.

5 comments:

Let's see what happens. I spent an hour on the phone with Chrisitn Viera only yesterday. And I certainly made it clear that the bias in Chalkbeat's reporting was misleading at best, slanderous at worst. I know what I said and stand ready to set the record straight if necessary.

Heard a rumor that the principal's academy is now shut down. This is the same academy that started with Klein. Klein is the same guy who got rid of Carmen, excessed her and retired her. She came back for vengeance to get rid of everything Klein created.Another rumor is now Carmen will retire after the elections. Assuming both rumors are true. Third and last rumor: Carmen retires only to open up Carmen's Academy (last and final slap in the face to Klein) but she will also earn 500k a year on top of already a 400k pension.

Carmen came to our school last year for a visit. My impression was that she was senile and lived in la la land. However, I also saw the glint of cruelty in her eyes, which I am sure she allows to erupt when needed. The perfect reformer to destroy our profession.